Where are things?

I'm doing a few unfinished posts at the moment cos of time restraints but wanted to revisit this old one.

This is the classic drawing of the current schematic on how vision happens. An object (e.g. a blue cup) reflects light which enters the eye and this stimulated the brain to cause consciousness of a "cup".

There is so much here but it doesn't need to get complex, but it does need to get "deep." Obviously deep cos we are discussing the very foundations of our vision and our "seeing" the world.

Now the first thing to note is a break any where in this system removes the cup. If the cup is not there then no cup. If a barrier is put between the cup and the eye to stop the light then no cup. If the lights are switched off so no light can reflect off the cup then no cup. If we do an Oedipus and remove our eyes then no cup. If we damage the optic nerve then no cup. If we remove the brain then no cup. If we are not there then no cup. Are those last two the same? Is removing the brain the same as removing the person? Not relevant to this post, but raises question of "self."  

Lets return to the barrier. It is drawn here and it splits the picture into 2 regions A and B. The question is are these regions the same?

Lets take region A and the cup. Its important to note that the cup occurs in two ways here. There is the cup in the picture which is being seen by "that" eye I have put in the picture. But we also need to note that the cup is being seen by us and our eyes as well. There are 2 cups here.

Quick excerpt from Wittgenstein to formalise this. For Wittgenstein meaning comes from how something is used. Language games he called it. The same ball can be used in many games depending upon the rules and practices. So this cup is being used in 2 ways here. One is the cup that has a place in a picture and also in the schema of vision so described, and the other is the cup "as it is", that is as we actually see it for ourselves right now.

The "as it is" is very interesting and has been given special note throughout history. It is recognised as the source of all knowledge and the foundation of reality. Importantly it is indivisible. You can't replace the blue cup "as it is" with the schema! If you did you have an SRH loop. It is rather that we start with the blue cup and build the scaffold of the schema on top of that. This is why the blue cup looks the same in both contexts. It is "as it is" and this is then hijacked into a schema that tries to explain how "as it is" arises. This is a self defeating. In order to cut the last branch on a tree you decide to stand on that branch, suddenly your system fails cos you didn't check for SRH. If you hadn't already seen the cup as it is how could you build the schema? So the cup as it is definitely does not depend on any schema! 

But now I wanted to use the schema all the same to point out something noted before.

We can see that a break anywhere in the schema removes the cup from sight.

You can use this to argue against "self existence." The naïve view is that what we see is what is there. But you can see in the schema that putting a wall between regions A and B means light no longer gets to the eye and the brain sees nothing. So the cup still exists, but that is not enough to be seen. This is the idea of noumenon and phenomenon. The "in itself" is the cup noumenon existing in the room, and the phenomenon is the full schema that allows it to be experienced. Modern science is very focused on noumena and wishes to abstract from phenomena. A hundred people can see the cup, but there is only one cup and science wants that one cup.

It can be seen that in so doing science puts an automatic limit on its ability to understand phenomena! Science rejects phenomena, how can it then study them! Science will need to change at some stage. But this idea has a long history. Plato most famously created the schema of the cave to illustrate how people get trapped by the world appearing as phenomena (shadows) and never rise to escape the cave and see things "in themselves" as pure forms.

Importantly Plato did identify that we get to the truth of things through thought. It is through correctly thinking about things that we get to the "in itself." For materialists the next move is to say that there is this world that is hidden but we can explore it through evidence. We layer more and more weight into this world. But we must ask the materialist what evidence is there for materialism? All there is is just evidence and thoughts.

And what is particularly worth noting is the importance of thinking to phenomena. When we learn a new thing we start to see it everywhere. A more unified view is that there are the "as it is" and then the mind does work to decide what things are. There are not two world's here but an "augmentation" of reality by the brain. This makes perfect sense today where we have technology that augments reality. I'm sure Dennett would agree the reason we even invented reality augmentation is because its how our brains already work. We are familiar with a "voice in our heads" as we talk to our self and narrate our own life. Morgan Freeman did not invent the film voice over in Shawshank Redemption, he was simply acting out how our brains already work.

Possible tricky unless you have experience of meditation but even the process by which things become a "thing" is really just mental augmentation. When we are half asleep and see this process slow down and even fail sometimes. We can wake up and take ages to actually put a name on that sound we can hear. But the moment we process the "sound" into the "alarm" suddenly a whole load of augmentation pops up. It triggers all the thoughts and actions of getting up and getting ready for work or whatever we plan to do. A friend in his half awake still dreaming state even saw the alarm as a giant buzzing wasp once.

So there is just one world with the "as it is" being the experience and the mental augmentation being the "in itself."

Now this is such a useful place to be. A whole load of problems disappear. For instance we often augment reality by calling things "mine." This is "my" experience, that is happening to "me". Really important to see this as augmentation. Freely augment away but never forget that this is all popups and stuff we are adding by processing the reality. What we may notice is a subtle confusion here. Yes it is happening, and this is a particular phenomenon that no one else is seeing so in that sense it is "mine" but no one owns that experience. You didn't pay for it (if you live in a capitalist system), you didn't make it, and no one even gave it to you: it is just there. It isn't yours. In fact there is no "you" to grasp for it anyway. Well there may be the idea of a "me" that reality has been augmented with: but an idea can't itself take ownership. The idea is suggesting it takes ownership, except you just point out there is no one in reality to actually carry out the wish. It's just a dream.

Where is the Blue Cup?

Now to close up let me get to the actual point of the post. There is a very simple but almost complete overlooked side to the schema above. Where actually is the cup? Buddha discusses this with Ananda in another way in the Shurangama Sutra but the result is the same. The materialists says the blue cup is where the picture of the blue cup is in the schema. The idealists say that is no good because with no one to see it there is no blue cup so it must be in the consciousness. But where is the consciousness? Modern Material-Idealists now say the brain. Some may say well if the brain by itself is no good and a cup by itself is no good so it must be in the thing that connects them. Perhaps it is the image in the eye. But blind people can get an image in the eye and still have no cup. Perhaps it is the light that links the cup and the eye. Perhaps it is the electrical signals. Perhaps there is a spirit. Perhaps there is a quantum state that encompasses the entire system including cup, light, nerves and brain.

Two stages to go and I'm finished.

(1) What we can say is that when we see something it becomes apparent. And it becomes apparent not in our eye, or in the brain but where it is. When we actually see a cup it is in the room and on the table. How silly to be discussing "where is the cup?" who ever asks such a stupid question. A kid can answer this. Hey son go get me my blue cup. Where is it? On the table. Ok dad. Is a perfectly simple exchange with no confusion. So how did we get to asking the question? It's that damn schema and the fact that it takes the cup and puts it in a very strange place. It puts it in the middle of the diagram and some thoughts about brains and stuff. That is where it is when we get asked the question philosophically! we know this because who ever set this up (me this time) went to lots of trouble to put the cup in a strange place already!

But it is at the same time revealing. Cups can be put in complex places, much more complex than a table. And this liberates much of the complexity that life throws at us. Many of us put cups in the strange place of "my possessions." Where is that!

(2) Now Buddha winds up (and I've never read it all yet) by easing up the idea that "we" are "our mind" is anywhere. Like the cup which can go to strange places, often without us even noticing its been put there, so we do the same with our ourselves. We put ourselves on tables, in houses, in relationships, in good times, in bad times, in bodies, in graves, in heaven. We like the cup are always putting our self somewhere and sometimes in a very complex way. But we aren't really moving at all any more than the cup above has been in a schema and then not. It all just reality augmentation and us playing around with thoughts.

So neither the cup nor ourselves is anywhere fixed it depends upon context and it depends what you mean. And if neither the cup nor our self is anywhere fixed then neither are we fixed at all. This is the avenue that leads some to liberate completely from all the troubles and uncertainties of life. Not by adding anything, and not by taking anything away, but just lubricating where things are so they can come and go more freely.

* and I never found a "place" for the actual thing I wanted to look at. How interesting! It was just that the idea that "I am experiencing" and "I am here at the centre of my world" contradict because how can I then experience the cup on the table. Don't I need be on the table as well to experience the cup? Or perhaps I have some remote sensing capability and while I am here and the cup is there I somehow can experience it. It doesn't make sense. Putting me anywhere is a problematic thing.